Obamacare

President Obama appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart the day before yesterday. Video of the extended full episode (I think) is posted below. Obama is playing before a friendly audience and Stewart does everything but give him a French kiss. He wants to, but modesty somehow intrudes. Stewart’s approach to Obama reminds me of Howard Stern interviewing Rudy Giuliani in the course of one of Giuliani’s reelection campaigns: »

The Supreme Court issued its decision in King v Burwell yesterday. The Supreme Court has posted its opinions in the case here. At issue in King was the legality of the IRS’s provision of tax credits in Obamacare exchanges established by the federal government. As Professor Jonathan Adler wrote in USA Today, the case “presents a straightforward case of statutory interpretation.” As such, it wasn’t a hard case; it was »

Within the last 48 hours, the Obama administration dodged two huge bullets. First, Congressional Republicans passed the trade promotion authority act, paving the way for passage of the Trans Pacific Partnership, which the administration has been negotiating for years, and the Trade In Services Agreement. Then, this morning, the Supreme Court bailed out Obamacare, rewriting key provisions of the Affordable Care Act to prevent Obamacare from collapsing, with two presumed »

Justice Scalia dissented vigorously from the Supreme Court’s decision upholding Obamacare subsidies on the federal exchange. Justices Thomas and Alito joined in that dissent. Here are key excerpts from Scalia’s dissent: We should start calling this law SCOTUScare. The Court interprets §36B to award tax credits on both federal and state Exchanges. It accepts that the “most natural sense” of the phrase “Exchange established by the State” is an Exchange »

I recall once reading an interview with one of the head writers of Star Trek: The Next Generation—you know, the faux Star Trek series where the role of Captain Kirk was reimagined by the UN and the National Organization of Women. (No: This is not arguable. Just as there is only one real James Bond—Sean Connery, damnit—there is only one Star Trek. Simple rule: if it doesn’t have William Shatner, »

The vote was 6-3. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion. The dissenters were Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito. Two big wins for the Obama administration today, the other being the housing case (see post below). UPDATE: According to SCOTUSblog, where I’m following today’s developments, the majority acknowledges the strength of the argument that the plain language of the statute permits subsidies only on state exchanges. However, the majority says that »

The late Arnaud de Borchgrave and the still kicking Robert Moss published The Spike in 1980 to expose the power of the media to suppress politically unpalatable stories in the service of covert political interests. The University of Chicago’s Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Charles Lipson draws on the metaphor of “the spike” to describe what has happened to the revelations of Monday’s Wall Street Journal story reporting »

On Morning Joe yesterday, the crew assessed the veracity of the Obama administration against the page-two Wall Street Journal story that I quoted and commented on in “From the mixed-up files of Jonathan Gruber.” On MSNBC a good time was had by all. Kudos to Joe Scarborough for picking up the story and to his sidekick Mika for playing it relatively straight. As for the rest, this is an unimpressive »

You have to wonder if the Obama administration has ever uttered a true word about Obamacare. I say no. President Obama has shifted the prevarications into overdrive in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s imminent decision on the IRS’s regulatory revision of the Obamacare law in King v. Burwell. On the issue before the Court in the case, we await a true word from the Obama administration, but we’re not holding »

Any day now, the Supreme Court will issue a decision on whether Obamacare subsidies are available to those who purchase health insurance on the federal exchange. I think the likelihood that the Court will say subsidies can’t be paid to such purchasers is a little south of 50 percent. But if the Court does decide King v. Burwell that way, millions of Americans will stand to lose their insurance subsidies. »

President Obama spoke to the Catholic Health Association yesterday in defense of Obamacare. The White House has posted the text of his remarks here. The White House has also posted a video of the speech (below) and an overfull Web page celebrating the deep thoughts of our Dear Leader on the subject. The New York Times story on the speech is here. The Supreme Court’s pending decision in King v. »

Unfortunately for the people of Minnesota, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton had a free hand adopting Obamacare in Minnesota, and Minnesota has gone all in. Courtesy of Governor Dayton and a Democratic legislature, we have bought into the Medicaid expansion and all the rest. In Minnesota the Obamacare set-up runs under the rubric of MNsure. I wonder how many voters know that Minnesota has adopted Obamacare and that MNsure, c’est ça. »

The starting point of statutory construction is the language of the statute itself. If the words of a statute are clear, they are to be construed according to their plain meaning. See generally Yule Kim, Statutory Interpretation: General Principles and Recent Trends (Congressional Research Service, 2008). If the words of a statue are ambiguous, a court may resort to legislative history and other devices to construe it. The Supreme Court »

This is what regular people hate about Washington: “How five Republicans let Congress keep its fraudulent Obamacare subsidies.” It’s an old story, updated most recently by Mark Leibovich in This Town. This particular case study comes to us via National Review’s Brendan Bordelon. Reading it all the way through, we achieves a highly unpleasant clarity. Bordelon reports: The rumors began trickling in about a week before the scheduled vote on »

Remember how the advocates of Obamacare said it would reduce the number of expensive emergency room visits because there’d be fewer uninsured people? Of course you knew the opposite would happen. From today’s Wall Street Journal: U.S. Emergency Room Visits Keep Climbing Emergency-room visits continued to climb in the second year of the Affordable Care Act, contradicting the law’s supporters who had predicted a decline in traffic as more people »

Justice Kennedy made an interesting comment today when he testified to Congress regarding the Supreme Court’s budget. Responding to a question about politically charged issues before the Court, Kennedy stated: We think an efficient, responsive legislation and executive branch in the political system will alleviate some of that pressure. We routinely decide cases involving federal statutes and we say, well, if this is wrong the Congress will fix it. But »

In her most recent column, Michelle Malkin finds herself in Obamacare hell. Her column is “Obamacare’s 1095-A nightmare.” Michelle first lost her private family health insurance last year as a result of Obamacare. Michelle told the story in her 2013 column “Obama lied, my health plan died.” Founded on skein of lies, Obamacare is a well wrought engine of destruction. The ninth circle of Dante’s hell was reserved for those »